React Spring Introduction and Installation

Last Updated : 26 Feb, 2025

In the development of modern web applications, adding animations makes the applications attractive and easy to understand with visualization. So, React Spring helps in creating animations that look more realistic, and the user experience is also improved. React Spring simplifies the process of animating various properties.

What is React Spring?

React Spring is a popular library for handling animations in React applications. It provides a set of tools to create high-performance, fluid animations, based on physics-based principles. This means that the library uses spring-based motion to animate elements, making animations feel more natural, realistic, and smooth.

React Spring stands out from other animation libraries by

Declarative Animations: React Spring uses a declarative approach to animations, meaning you describe how the animation should look in the end, and the library takes care of the transition.
Spring-based Animations: Instead of traditional keyframes, React Spring uses springs to animate elements. This results in more fluid, natural-looking transitions.
Easy Integration: React Spring can be easily integrated with any React app and is flexible enough to work with other animation solutions or libraries.

Core Concepts in React Spring

React Spring revolves around a few core concepts that make animations more natural and easy to implement:

Springs: Instead of defining explicit keyframes, React Spring uses “springs,” which apply physics principles to animate components. Springs allow you to define start and end values, and React Spring calculates how to animate the transition.
useSpring and useSprings: These hooks are used to create spring animations for single and multiple elements, respectively.
- useSpring: Animates a single value, ideal for animating a single component.
- useSprings: Handles an array of spring animations, perfect for animating lists or grids of elements.
animated: The animated component is a wrapper around the standard HTML elements, which allows you to apply animations to them. Any element wrapped with animated becomes animatable.
useTransition: This is a hook used for animating elements as they enter and exit the DOM, ideal for animations like page transitions or lists that change dynamically.

Steps to Implement React-Spring

Step 1: Create a new application using the following command.

npx create-react-app reactspringdemo
cd reactspringdemo

Step 2: Install the React Spring library.

npm install react-spring

Folder Structure

Project Structure.

JavaScript

import React from 'react' import LoopingCard from './LoopingCard'  function App() {     console.log('hello')     return (         <>             <LoopingCard />         </>     ); }  export default App;

JavaScript

//LoopingCard.js import React from 'react'; import { useSpring, animated } from 'react-spring'  const LoopingCard = () => {      const styles = useSpring({         loop: true,         from: { rotateZ: 0 },         to: { rotateZ: 360 },         duration: 2000,     });      return (<animated.div         style={{             width: 80,             height: 80,             backgroundColor: 'd6d6d6',             borderRadius: 16,             boxShadow: 'rgb(0,0,0,0.44) 0px 5px 5px',             display: 'flex',             alignItems: 'center',             justifyContent: 'center',             color: 'green',             margin: 250,             ...styles,         }} >GFG</animated.div>     ); }  export default LoopingCard;

Step to Run the Application: Run the following command.

npm start

Output:

In this example

The app component renderers the LoopingCard component and logs “hello” to the console.
The animation with useSpring uses useSpring from react-spring to animate the card, rotating it from 0 to 360 degrees infinitely.
The Styled Card the animated .div is styled as a square card with a gray background, rounded corners, and a green “GFG” text inside.
The Infinite Loop the animation loops indefinitely with a 2-second duration, making the card continuously rotate.

Why use react Spring

Declarative Animations: You describe what you want the animation to do, and React Spring handles the “how.”
Spring-Based Animations: React Spring uses spring physics to mimic realistic movement, making animations smoother.
Performance: React Spring is highly optimized for performance and uses native browser features like requestAnimationFrame for smooth rendering.
Simple and Flexible API: It offers hooks like useSpring, useTrail, and useTransition that make it easy to create complex animations.

Use Cases of React Spring

Loading Animations: Make loading screens look more interesting using the animation while users wait for content to load.
Page Transitions: Between the different pages, they animate smoothly.
Interactive UI Components: This makes the UI component interactive by adding the effects to buttons and cards when clicked on them it changes color or start animating.
Pop-ups and Tooltips: Animate pop-ups, tooltips, and notifications to grab users’ attention in a friendly way.